LOUIS XIVTTON "A Toutes Les Gloires de la France"

"To all the glories of France," the famous engraving from Versailles reads, and indeed, to France's most glorious sovereign is the painting dedicated. Inheriting a fractured France on the brink of feudal collapse and global irrelevance, Louis XIV restored the legacy of Charlemagne and turned his country into the cultural powerhouse that would serve as the world's light for hundreds of years.

Though a divine administrator by his own right (and by his own insistence, as a direct representative of God's will on Earth), The Sun King is most known for his cultural achievements, culminating in the construction of the Palace of Versailles. The patron of both the Academie Francaise and various French greats like Moliere and Lully, Louis XIV used the Palace to enrapture his decadent, unruly nobles, allowing the King to centralize the French state without obstruction. At Versailles, the concentration-camp of beauty and splendor, French culture was forged in gold and marble. The Sun King also developed Ballet into great popularity across France and Europe with his performances: Looking past the heart-shaped Fleur-de-Lis and the helmets of the Gauloises cigarette brand, the viewer will find the mask of the personified sun, a costume-piece used by the King at his most famous display, "Le concert Royal de la Nuit" (The Royal Concert of the Night). The icons all serve as tribute to France's greatest monarch, who had both heart, and an unquestionable sense of what it meant to be 'French.'

The artist makes no secret about his painting being a pastiche of Hyacinthe Rigaud's famous 1701 portrait, an image so iconic that it serves as the embodiment of the Age of Absolutism. Though Louis, in the original, stands in the right third of the canvas, the artist has brought him to his proper place in the center, forcing the eye onto the King's most prized artifact, "Joyeuse," the ever-glimmering sword of Charlemagne.

Louis XIV, in his time, turned France into the military, economic, and cultural center of the world. Now, transported from the halls of Versailles into this work's nostalgic riptide of France's monarchical blue and yellow, he watches, a sentinel as blinding as the sun, over the last remaining vestige of Frankish supremacy: Louis Vuitton, the Parisian high fashion house.”

Sinclair Britten Cabocel, July 28, 2018